Smiting the smiteable since 2005

The Candidates Can Go Back to Falling from their Stumps Now

The candidates can go back to falling from their stumps. The moderators will start assertiveness training. And, regular programming can begin after these words from our sponsors. All the candidates are lawyering up for the inevitable challenges. Instant polls about truthiness and burning pants are winding down. That’s it. Comedy show’s over. It’s time to lay awake like a kid anticipating Christmas – except the stakes are higher and people will consider moving to Canada based on the outcome. It is not a season to look forward to. In two weeks, it will be Black Tuesday, with an emphasis on the black.

The scoring consensus seems to be Obama: 0-T-1, unless you are Fox News. They scored it Infinity – Infinity – Infinity for Romney, plus threw in 1,000 bonus points for wearing nice wingtips. Yet with all the money spent and all the lies told, that small sliver of undecided voters is still undecided. These people, as they always will, won’t decide how to vote until they enter the booth. The booth possibly owned by Romney’s son.

It’s unfathomable these people couldn’t decide how to vote long before the debates. These weren’t two knotheads so identical you couldn’t tell them apart. If you couldn’t see the Grand Canyon between their “views of the future for America” (cue the waving flag, balloons, and John Phillip Sousa) they are blind. And, quite obviously dumb as tree stump. What the hell are you waiting for?

We’ve cut much hay this year over voter disenfranchisement. State legislatures decided they must protect the electorate from non-existent voting fraud by committing legislative fraud. They required ironclad photo IDs like driver’s licenses – an item most long haul truckers have for each state to cover the dozens of points for speeding and falling asleep under the influence of uppers. That the legislation hit poor, non-white, and old democrats disproportionately was a mere coincidence according to the Republican-exclusive legislatures that voted them in.

But then, here are people who still have the franchise but fritter it away by refusing to make a patently obvious choice – disenfranchisement by weak will power if you will.

It is at times like these when means testing is not such a bad idea. If you can’t decide which shoes to wear in the morning, you are too stupid to vote – much like a Super Lotto winner planning to return to their job as a fry cook. They are a danger to themselves and others. This isn’t disenfranchisement it’s common sense. A “pin the chad on the stylus” vote is worse than no vote at all.

Using means testing as the last line of defense against the terminally indecisive is paramount. There is only one other way to protect the rest of us. Stack a parliament like Saddam Hussein so all the purple thumbs add up to 110% of the vote.

But then. That’s not so fair either. Mitt could just buy the parliament.